obvious, though there is a clear difference since Poe does not show the same degree of nervous sexualism. The name of Dostoyevsky came also into my mind for he, too, was certainly decadent; and I reflected that one finds in the “new” and “fresh” American and Russian world what “old” France also offers. The wonted classification of nations will have to be thoroughly revised.
In Europe, and especially in our country, we have but a fragmentary knowledge of American literature. This is a mistake. I admit that I took no pleasure in the American philosophers, neither in the school of Edwards nor in that of Franklin, nor even in the newer tendencies. The epistemology, or theory of knowledge, of William James’s Pragmatism I found as impossible to accept as that of Positivism; though his brother, Henry James, was more interesting, particularly in his attempt (in “Daisy Miller”) to analyse the characters of Americans and of Europeans. Indeed, I have always followed the spiritual development of America rather in her imaginative literature than otherwise. For instance, in the struggle against Puritanism and Calvinism a modern and humane standpoint is especially conspicuous; and the fight against slavery was waged with the pen long before the Civil War began. Throughout American writings a strong progressive element is to be observed. Knowing that their State and nationality were born of revolution, Americans feel no fear of what is new, and sympathize genuinely with nations that have won freedom. Thus, in our rebellion against Austria, we, like other races before us, found well-wishers in America.
American literature, not unnaturally, reflects mainly the external side of life—the life of the East, the West, the Centre and the South, the social conditions of the various strata of the people and especially of the negroes and of the multifarious immigrants. The principal phases of American history, with their heroes, are—somewhat inartistically—portrayed; and, little by little, American writers are seen to have grown conscious of their specifically American speech, manners and outlook, and of the difference between them and Europe, even Anglo-Saxon Europe.
The growth of American realism is noticeable, too, in the treatment of women and of love—important themes with novelists—though this realism has developed side by side with the realism of European literature and, to some extent, under its influence. And in America, as in Europe, the short story is characteristic, albeit not wholly new, as Poe proves.
